


God Is Just Some Guy and Heaven Is His Basement

by rosyy



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Childhood, Drowning, F/M, Fluff, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Mystery, Near Death Experiences, Religious Discussion, Romance, Soulmates, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 23:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18974791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosyy/pseuds/rosyy
Summary: The girl is rapidly becoming dead weight. Worse, actually-- she might be having a seizure, but Homer isn’t going to stop to try and find out. He swears that they are almost there, they must be, but it’s another eternity before they break the barrier and there is no gasp, no spluttering, she has gone still--"Coming back to life. Was that your decision? Could you have stayed-- well, wherever you were, had you wanted to?"“There was someone else,” Homer says, squinting against the light as it filters through trees, “a kid. I think she chose for me.”Homer dies, over and over again, and comes to realize that humans have got it wrong all this time-- there is no God; there is a little girl, and her name isNina.





	God Is Just Some Guy and Heaven Is His Basement

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this could be called a soulmate au? it's not like "au where your soulmates name is tattooed on your arm" type thing but it's something
> 
> I know I'm really throwing this out into the void, the fandom is so small and season 2 has been out for a while now so I'm not expecting much response but here it is anyway
> 
> you're here at least! I hope you like it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you want to go back?

Homer isn’t _that_ religious-- he went to church pretty often as a little kid, but his family pretty much stopped going save for holidays by the time he reached his teen years. It grew into more of a superstition than anything else. He didn’t put much thought into it, and no one pressured him to. His relationship with God was equal to his relationship to, say, his uncle in Florida-- awkward chatter during family reunions, brief text exchanges on birthdays, the occasional _good luck at pershing kiddo_ and _heard about Sprinkles, so sorry. Send pics of the new cat_ , followed by slightly blurry photos of a cat.

And then he dies. As it turns out, the Heaven is surrounded by water, and God takes form in a little girl, pounding her fist against the window of a sinking van, blonde hair flowing around her, cheeks puffed out like a fish. She sees him and a surprised burst of bubbles comes out of her mouth. They hold eye contact for another moment before she kicks upwards and leaves his sight. Homer finds himself hitting the glass as he sinks with the van, craning his neck to try and find her again.

He isn’t breathing, but that doesn’t seem to matter. His lungs feel fine, and his instincts are screaming at him not to find air, but to _find that little girl again._ Hell knows why. He claws at the metal and glass, looking for an opening in the vehicle, but she reappears before he gets anywhere with that. It looks like she’s shouting to him, but the sound doesn’t carry, and he can’t read her lips. She searches his face frantically, but all he can do is shake his head. She disappears again.

Homer pounds the glass, but she’s back again quickly. However, this time she doesn’t pay him any attention, swimming straight past him, downwards. He fights to follow her down, and finally sees what she’s going for-- the windshield is broken. He watches her kick and fight her way past it, into the open water, into the light of the sun, and rapidly follows her as the van sinks into darkness.

And then she stops. _Swim,_ he urges her, concentrating, focusing all his energy on pouring that one thought into her mind. Like she hears him, she turns her face downward to look at him, panic growing in her eyes, but she doesn’t move.

Homer, frantically taking matters into his own hands, struggles to reach her, grabs her, kicks towards the sun with everything in him, but she is already starting to jerk and convulse in his arms. She can’t die. She can’t.

The girl is rapidly becoming dead weight. Worse, actually-- she might be having a seizure, but Homer isn’t going to stop to try and find out. He swears that they are almost there, they must be, but it’s another eternity before they break the barrier and there is no gasp, no spluttering, she has gone still--

 

Darkness. Stars, or maybe buildings.

_“Do you want to go back?”_

It’s an old voice, maybe the oldest in the world, speaking in someone else’s head. Not for him.

_“You will know great love, but it will be very hard.”_

There is no ground to stand on, but he isn’t floating or falling, either. He closes his eyes, not wanting to think about it, but sees exactly the same.

_“You will suffer.”_

He rises. He can’t quite feel his body.

_“Me? I want you to stay here.”_

“Back,” says the voice of a little girl, _his_ girl, and he turns around quickly to see her--

But then everything explodes, or probably implodes, folds into the tip of a pin, and he wakes up feeling so big and so miniscule at the very same time.

 _“Homer?_ Can you hear me? Oh my god. He’s waking up,” someone sobs, and there is the beeping of a heart monitor, crisp, slightly itchy sheets tucked around him, air, breath, _life._

Homer opens his eyes.

 

-

 

“Let me-- can I ask you something, Homer?” Hunter Aloysius Percy asks a twenty-four year old Homer Roberts, who is sat in the passenger seat of a 2003 Ford Taurus, on his way to the rest of his life.

“Shoot,” he replies, friendly, because he still doesn’t know about that last part yet. It’s 2006, and he’s going to have a son.

“When you-- excuse me for being so blunt, but after your accident, when you died, and you came back--” Hap pauses for a moment, struggling with his words. “Did you-- did you feel like that was a _choice?”_

“A choice?”

“Sure,” says Hap, “I mean-- coming back to life. Was that your decision? Could you have stayed-- well, wherever you were, had you wanted to?”

Homer hesitates on this one. The windows are rolled down, and he turns his face towards the breeze, the early-autumn air.

“...No,” he says at last.

Hap is surprised at this. “No?”

“No,” Homer repeats, “I didn’t decide anything.”

Hap is frowning, now. “Are you sure? That’s-- sorry, that’s just not the answer I usually get.”

“There was someone else,” Homer says, squinting against the light as it filters through trees, “a kid. I think she chose for me.”

“A kid, like a child?”

Homer nods. “Yeah. Like a third grader, maybe. I’m pretty sure she died, too, and the second I heard her say she wanted to go back, I woke up.”

“Incredible,” Hap murmurs.

They go to Hap's weird, cabin-in-the-woods situation, which really should've been the red flag to end all red flags, but instead of making a run for it (and he could've. Hap is getting older, Homer has years of college football on his back, and he would have made it,  _easy,_ and he can't stop  _thinking_ about that, days later, weeks later, when the gas crawls along his glass walls towards him, Scott with his back turned, Rachel, watching, hands pressed against the ventilation, and he's so scared he cries--) he goes inside, allows Hap to latch the door behind them, asks to use the bathroom and hides his ring.

Hap sticks him with a syringe the moment he gets out. He wakes up inside his new home, a human fish tank, unbelievably cold. Rachel says he'll adapt.

Rachel has been here the past two years.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be very honest, I don't think I can muster the motivation to fuel this thing on my own, so if you leave a comment it'll be helpful
> 
> sorry to be like that lol


End file.
